If you have an XO laptop [1], or are just interested in seeing how they work, come on down to SF State [2]'s downtown San Francisco campus for a get together on August 16, 2008. Note that this location is NOT the main campus.

If you have an XO or two (or several), bring them! Have [grand]kids who like XOs? Bring them too! Download a LiveCD from  http://dev.laptop.org/pub/livebackupcd/ [3] or simply bring your enthusiasm.

[4]

 

What: OLPC-SF August 2008 meeting

Why: Meet Bruce Baikie [5], who will talk about a pilot deployment in Senegal with solar Wi-Fi mesh repeaters. Green Wi-Fi, his non-profit firm produces a self-sustained solar powered Wi-Fi mesh repeater.

Green WiFi provides solar powered access to global information and educational resources for developing regions and K-12 school children striving for knowledge in a digitally divided world. There are approximately 3 billion people under the age of 15 living in developing nations. 42 percent of the developing world's population is below the age of 15. Green WiFi was founded on the principle that the welfare of our world is dependent, in large part, on providing these children with free and open access to the world's information. Read more about Green Wi-Fi at http://www.green-wifi.org/index.html [6]

Other activities:

• We'll have the latest builds of software running on the laptop.
• Build a mesh network, share activities, generate crazy ideas. 
• We also have a schoolserver running build 165 and configured and running complete with active antennae [7]. This allows you to mesh with the server (or your nearest XO) and route to the Internet!
• If you need to upgrade your XO's software build, we can do that at the meeting as well.
• We also [tentatively] plan to have live CDs that allow many garden-variety laptops to run a 802.11s based mesh. See http://www.open80211s.org/ [8] for more details on running a mesh on non-XO machines!

When: Saturday, August 16, 2008.

• 10am to 11am - Setup and meet and greet/wake up. Plenty of cafes on Market St. Load up!
• 11am to 12:00 - Bruce Baikie's Talk.
• 12:00 to 2:00pm - Breakout groups.

Where: Room 553, SF State Downtown campus (835 Market St., San Francisco,CA, 94103 [9]).This is the same building as the new Westfield mall that houses Bloomingdale's. Look for the SFSU banner on Market St. between 4th and 5th streets, right next to Walgreens. Take the elevator to the 5th floor.

• By car: http://www.sfsu.edu/~parking/directions/downtown_center/car.html [10]

• By Muni: http://www.sfsu.edu/~parking/directions/downtown_center/muni.html [11]

• By BART: http://www.sfsu.edu/~parking/directions/downtown_center/bart.html [12]